Josh Barnett on failed Contract “Zuffa was unwilling to give me something that they gave Eddie Alvarez”

It looks like Bellator and Viacom have struck again in the war with Zuffa, but this win comes inadvertently. Josh Barnett was unwilling to sign with the UFC because the promotion was unwilling to give him something that Zuffa had offered in the Eddie Alvarez contract.

“I was excited to fight Junior. I thought he was a favorable match up for me, but Zuffa was unwilling to give me something that they gave Eddie Alvarez. No disrespect to Eddie, but I felt it was fair to give it to me as well.”

Bellator inadvertently caused this because they took Alvarez to court after they could not come to terms with a new contract and didn’t want to let him go to the UFC. When they took Alvarez to court, the details of his contract came out, and that is why Barnett knows what the terms of his contract were. Without that knowledge, he would not have expected the same stipulations in his own contract, and most likely would have signed with the UFC. No one knows besides Barnett if it was the $250,000 signing bonus, the pay-per-view bonus, the straight pay he would have received, or something else that Alvarez was offered and he was not.

In the end, Barnett does feel bad about not signing with the UFC, because he knows the fans wanted him in the Octagon. He would have been on the fast track to the title if he would have beaten Junior dos Santos in his debut as well. Barnett’s career looks to be going in a different path instead.

“Although things seem to be working out well for me, I feel bad for the fans. They wanted me to fight certain guys in the UFC and I really wanted to give them those fights. Once we get the deal we are working on done, the fight the fans scream for will be lost forever.”

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Jelly boy needs to drop to 205 anyway. Really, his point is they offered it to someone else, and now he is gonna pout cause they didn’t give it to him too? What is this, kindergarten? And if he didn’t know about it he would have signed? What a toddler. If the “fans” were so important he and or his management would have worked around whatever it was with performance bonuses or clauses. While I like his personality flare I am not impressed with his ability to blow pretty colored smoke up my ass.

I think the overall question is who is a bigger draw. Barnett, while interesting, has never been brought up in the heavyweight talk as much as much as Alvarez has when talking about who the fans want to see in the UFC.

Barnett is one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time and could easily beat everybody in the world… I’m amazed how some of you people are willing to take away achievements with your utterly retarded comments, you’re the same people who think Kimbo Slice and Hulk Hogan are the best fighters in the world, GTFOH